World’s Third Longest River “Yangtze” Mysteriously Turned Red

Behind every event there is always some reason. But sometimes you can’t find it. This type of incident has happened in China. For the first time on Sept. 6, the water of Yangtze River, the third longest river in the world suddenly turned into red. Nobody knows, Why?

The Yangtze River is the longest in Asia and the third-longest in the world. It is traditionally known as the “golden watercourse.” The traditional name clearly mentions that the color of this river’s water is golden. For the first time on Sep. 6, residents in the surrounding area near Chongqing city found that the water of their golden river had turned red. Some people picked up some water into a bottle as a sovereign on Thursday and Friday. They became surprised by seeing that the water was completely opaque and had a similar orange-red appearance as tomato juice. Though the water was turned into red, but people like fishermen and others whose livelihood depend on this river were and still now are doing their daily work. Last December, a similar occurrence took place on China’s Jian River which turned red after becoming polluted by a powerful dye.

Why the golden water of Yangtze River turned into red, nobody knows. Scientists are assuming the sudden change of the water’s color happened because of pollution.

Emily Stanley, a limnologist (study of freshwater science) at the University of Wisconsin said that the color of the river’s water might have changed because of microorganisms. She told LiveScience, “When water turns red, the thing a lot of people think of first is red tide. But the algae that causes red tide is a marine group and not a freshwater group, so it’s highly, highly unlikely that this is a red-tide-related phenomenon.”